Barclays computer says d'oh!
Saturday shopping fail
Posted in Management, 23rd August 2010 12:38 GMT
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Barclays customers were left without access to their accounts on Saturday thanks to a computer failure.
Customers could not use ATMs or online banking thanks to a computer failure apparently caused by a power outage. The bank insisted the problem was fixed within 20 minutes - by about 1.50pm on Saturday. But some forum posters and Reuters said the problems were still going on at 8.15 on Saturday evening.
Customers were left unable to pay for their purchases or to take money from cash machines.
Barclays has refused to comment on the issue beyond an apology and has yet to respond to messages left by the Reg refused to discuss the cause of the outage with the Reg.
The bank signed a deal with NCR earlier this month to provide maintenance of its 550 remote and host operated ATMs, but this outage seems to have hit the whole network. ®
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COMMENTS
But they should.....
Cue lots of idiots clamouring about "Disaster Recovery" and "they should have resiliance" when they know nothing about the situation.
Some errors just happen, and the knock on effect if bigger than the fault. e.g. ever been in a phantom traffic jam.
Oh, I would love that breif
Scenario 1:
Stampeding Elephants crush datacentre.
Resolution: Surround datacentre with crack guard mouse platoon.
Scenario 2:
Meteor Strike
Resolution: Retain services of Bruce Willis
et etc
As you say, could keep you in easy employment for a decade!
Re: Exactly
Reminds me of the time during a disaster recovery test when the guy running the test told me the PTB wanted me to document every possible problem we could encounter, and the resolution.
Well, that would be job security for the next 10 years or so...
exactly
Even with the best will in the world, you cannot plan for every eventuality. Some are impossible to predict. As long as they learn something from this and prevent it (or similar things) happening again, then it's not a complete waste.
Aah, but
ATMs and the associated back-end represent a tier 1 service (ie failure can lead to 'financial and reputational harm), so ought to be in the region of 4 or 5 nines availability. Sometimes, yes, sh*t does happen, but Barclays is not what it ought to be when it comes to resilience and failover.
AC, obviously.
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